Howto setup wakeonlan

Based off of wiki entry at http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Wake-on-LAN

First, find out whether your network card supports wol:

# ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
       Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
       Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                               100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
       Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
       Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                               100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
       Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
       Speed: 100Mb/s
       Duplex: Full
       Port: MII
       PHYAD: 1
       Transceiver: internal
       Auto-negotiation: on
       Supports Wake-on: pumbg
       Wake-on: g
       Current message level: 0x00000001 (1)
       Link detected: yes

The ‘g’ in Supports Wake-on: pumbg indicates that wake-on-lan by using a ‘magic packet’ is indeed supported. Next, you need to make sure that wake-on-lan support is enabled in the BIOS (although, this does not seem to be necessary for my motherboard). In addition, you need to tell your network card to enable wake-on-lan:

# ethtool -s eth0 wol g

Since after rebooting Wake-on will be reset, you might what to add it to /etc/rc.local:

# echo 'ethtool -s eth0 wol g' >> /etc/rc.local

Make sure this line is before the line that has exit 0

Now turn off you mythbox and send it a ‘magic packet’.

Send the ‘Macic Packet’
You will need a wake-on-lan client to send ‘magic packets’ over your network. First, determine the MAC address of the machine you what to power on:

# ifconfig

Turn off your mythbox and from another computer execute the following command (replacing the MAC address with the one you just found). I used a wake-on-lan client from Sourceforge.

$ wol 00:4F:49:07:0B:5F

If all went well, your mythbox will boot up now!